Most people think of chickens as being among the benign farm animals, but not so! Today I went out to feed them and saw a gopher skin on the floor of the coop. The gopher had been opened up like a hard candy and his skin discarded like a cellophane wrapper. It looked a little like a miniature bearskin rug. The chickens had eaten everything out of the skin and that caused me to wonder about egg carton labels that claim their chickens are “vegetarian fed”. I guess ours are vegetarian fed, too, because the feed I give them is 100% vegetable matter. If you count what they feed themselves, though, I doubt anyone who raises chickens can honestly claim they are “vegetarian fed”—unless they post guards to make the bad chickens spit out the bugs and rodents they ingest. Just sayin’….
Filed under: Cats
Kittens were born in the middle of September here at City Girl Farm. We picked up the momma cat a day or two before she delivered her babies. She disappeared pretty much when she got here and I thought she just didn’t want to stay here. A couple of days later she came out and she was so small I thought she was a completely different cat! I didn’t recognize her. There are three sets of pictures in this gallery: the first were taken as soon as we discovered their hideout, the second ones were taken once their eyes were open and the last ones were taken today. We’re guessing they’re about seven weeks old.
Six days later, this is what it looked like here.
Morning after the blizzard
Snow drifted by the coop
Out the front door
Sunrise on Friday
Snow drifted in front of the house
Fall…We blinked; we missed it.
This is just wrong. We were less than a month into autumn when we had a wee little storm blow through. This is what it looked like this morning, two days later, after it had a chance to melt a little.
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- The corral after the storm
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- Hay rolls after the storm
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- This is what season?
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- North side of the house after the storm
Thomas sitting on bike
One more post to bring us a little closer to the present before I call it a night. Thomas picked up a Yamaha XS 350 for $250 on e-Bay. It is missing a seat and a kick starter but is in good shape other than that. This is HIS big project. Take a look at the happy boy and his bike.
Cool '70's colors!
Boy with cheesy grin
One of my "stealth zucchinis"
Of course one of the things that kept me from blogging was that the garden started to need serious attention. This is a picture of me holding a zucchini that hid from me in order to avoid harvest. As you can see, I finally caught it. Considering the hail and how unseasonably wet it was, we had a great harvest.
Some carrots
At the high point of the harvest, I loaded up a basket to sell at the home school dance. It was really yummy. Looking forward to more next year.
Basket of vegetables, herbs and eggs
One of the projects we started was renovating the chicken coop.
Old nest box
The old nest box was quite deteriorated and just awful to clean. I came across and idea perusing other people’s blogs and decided to build new nest boxes with cinder block, boards and dishpans. Sounds like a redneck solution, I know but it is much easier to clean and I enjoy chickens much more when they don’t stink.
boxes screwed onto board
We fixed some broken/missing slats where they roost and added some new roosting area as well. We currently working on a new front door and hope to have that done by the end of the week.
New slats
chickens investigating boxes
Our neighbor's daughter holding a hail stone
hail stone
I know it’s October, but I’m catching up from a very busy summer! We had a pretty spectacular hail storm a couple of months ago that scarred up some of the tomatoes and zucchini. We were on the very edge of it and you’ll just have to imagine what golf-ball sized hail sounds like on a metal roof. We had some minor damage to the glare guards on our car and that was it. A half mile up the road our neighbors are getting new roofs and new siding, not to mention having their cars fixed.
Thomas taking aim
We had been talking about it for a while but when I came home last night my daughter told me that one of our roosters had attacked her. My belly was starting to get full. We have one hen who I guess is lowest on the totem pole and she stays perched in the coop all day long because as soon as she gets down to eat or drink she gets gang-banged by the roosters. They are treading her back feathers off and I feel so sorry for her. They consume feed and offer nothing but aggression and horniness in return.
So Thomas and I decided today was the day. Some readers may have read about Aurelia who had to be renamed after we saw “her” climbing on to some of the hens. It was Aurelio’s turn today.
I almost called my chicken mentor to see if she could come over to hold my hand and then I just started thinking. What is the matter with me?? A hundred years ago a mother would send her child out to kill and butcher a chicken and bring it in to her to cook. How hard could this be?? So we got out the book, the gun, the pot of boiling water, some knives and a table and went to work.
Thomas plucking the bird
Cutting off the neck
I discovered a few interesting things about chickens:
- there is not as much blood as I expected
- a rooster’s testicle must be 10 times the size of its brain (which could account for it’s nasty dispositon)
- probably should have cold-plucked it since we were only doing one bird
- the whole process doesn’t take very long even with two squeamish and inexperienced butchers
- once the chicken has pissed you off enough it’s like fishing—a little gory, but not traumatic
My friend was right. It was great to know I could do it. The Simla butcher’s offer of $2.50 per bird done while I drink a cup of coffee still sounds appealing, though. I’ll post again after we have eaten him.
Aurelio in the fridge
Filed under: Other animals | Tags: bird, rescued bird, sparrow, sylvester the sparrow
Much more feathered out
We set Sylvester the Sparrow free. We knew it was time when he would try to fly out of the cage when we fed him. We have 5 indoor predators, three of which are particularly dangerous and we knew we couldn’t keep him in the cat carrier forever (although Thomas had already suggested a birdcage and a new pet.)
We went out the front door to set him free and then saw one of the barn cats walking right by the porch and decided that maybe setting him free from the balcony was a better idea.
We put him on the deck rail. From there he flew to my shoulder, then to the nearest tree where had a very tenuous hold on a tiny branch, from there to the roof and finally to a “real” branch on a nearby tree. Haven’t seen him since and have to confess I miss him a little. Here are some more pictures.
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- He wanted attention
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- Much more feathered out
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- He flew to my shoulder several times
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- Isn’t he handsome?
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- Thomas opening the shoebox to set him free
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- He flew to my shoulder one last time
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- He flew from my shoulder to the roof
